Game of the Week #689: A. Erigaisi - M. Bluebaum, Grand Swiss 2025

by Merijn van Delft
9/19/2025 – In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft takes a look at a game by Matthias Blübaum, who won the European Individual Championship in 2022 and 2025, and recently qualified for the 2026 Candidates Tournament by finishing second at the 2025 Grand Swiss in Samarkand. One of the key moments was his win with Black against Arjun Erigaisi. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
In this Fritztrainer: “Attack like a Super GM” with Gukesh we touch upon all aspects of his play, with special emphasis on how you can become a better attacking player.

Game of the Week #689

While 14-year old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus stole the show in the first part of the Grand Swiss, as we saw last week, in the final part of the tournament German top grandmasters Vincent Keymer and Matthias Bluebaum took over. Until the very end, both were in the race to qualify for the Candidates. In their mutual encounter, Keymer blundered horribly in a winning position, ruining his qualification. Bluebaum went on to qualify instead and our Game of the Week is his impressive win over Erigaisi from the seventh round.

Warm-up question: What would you play here with Black?

This week's show

In this opening Black opts for active piece play and is not afraid to fight for the initiative from an early stage. One of the many good features of this opening is that Black is often the side which controls the pace of the game.

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Merijn van Delft is an International Master from the Netherlands who lived in Hamburg for many years and is currently based in Amsterdam. After scoring a GM norm in 2017 he is eager for more. His ChessBase show on Wednesday evenings has been running for over ten years now.